DG/93/13 UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION Address by Mr Federico Mayor Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at the International Meeting of Experts on the Problems of Tolerance Istanbul, 17 April 1993.......
DG/93/13 No, tolerance is not a concept. It has expressions, the names of cities. Formerly Toledo or Alexandria. Today Rio or Buenos Aires. It calls to mind architecture, arts of living, music, a wealth of intellectual and artistic creations, a peaceful way - for communities differing as widely as can be imagined - of living together side by side and finding themselves all the better for it. No, tolerance is not a Utopia. Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear friends, I am happy to be with you and to share in your work for a brief moment. Allow me first of all to express my gratitude to the Turkish authorities for their initiative, their welcome and their generous hospitality. I should also like to thank warmly the University of Marmara whose co-operation has enabled this meeting to be held. I wish, lastly, to thank all the intellectuals present here, whose role as unifiers of opinion is, I believe, more important than ever. Since people are different, since nations are different, they can get on together peacefully only if they know one another, recognize one another and show regard for each other's differences. Diversity of races, languages, religions, ways of life and political systems is a fact of human society and is, indeed, the source of all its riches. However much peoples intermingle, whatever exchanges of ideas and information take place among individuals, whatever progress is made by science and technology, or however pre-eminent a particular economic, political or social 'model' becomes, diversity will remain - and must remain - the rule. Every individual and every people must therefore make a conscious effort not only to admit that others may think and behave differently, but also to convince themselves that their own way of being is not better than that of other people. This effort is all the more essential when one realizes that our lives are becoming more and more closely interwoven every day. The growing interdependence of the world obliges us to 'see' the other; indeed, even if we refused to see him, he would compel our recognition. In addition, the problems that humanity must overcome if it is to survive into the new millennium- demographic growth, environment, development, to quote only the most important - are also interdependent, so that individual and collective action and behaviour have intersecting effects whose overlapping or linkages are difficult to measure. The conscious effort that has to be made to accept and appreciate otherness is also a road that has to be trodden in order to arrive at a democratic culture. The demonstrations of intolerance and hatred that are besmirching the early days of the post-communist era are bitter proof that oppression has well and truly vanished. Democracy, which lends itself to the expression of diversity, is also a way of social functioning in which every citizen must follow absolutely the rule of listening and understanding. We must learn to remember, without projecting the past onto the future in a fatalistic way. The view of the future must at all costs be given priority over the view of the past. Memory of the future! A better shared common future: that is one of the keys to tolerance.
DG/93/13 - page 2 Since violence brings violence in its train, the circle can be broken only by practising forgiveness. Can there be a more striking illustration of remembrance free from rancour than the planned memorial of Gorée-Almadies, the beacon from which, from the extremity of African soil, will shine the light of the recollection of an unbearable past (the slave trade) and the light of a call to a future of racial and human brotherhood? Tolerance is learned wherever people live together - the family unit, school and out-of-school contexts, religious groups, and associations, for example. It calls for a knowledge of history and geography and of foreign languages, because only a knowledge of the ideas, ways and beliefs of other inhabitants of the earth can instil the receptivity and sense of relativity that nourish tolerance. The earlier tolerance is learned the more effective it will be (children's acute sense of justice and injustice and their natural generosity are a considerable asset in this connection). Acquired after a hard-fought daily struggle, tolerance is certainty a virtue. What in fact would be the worth of valour that did not fight or had not been put to the test? In his Areopagitica, a plea for greater freedom of the press, John Milton describes the danger and the honour of learning: 'I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary...'. After this daily struggle has been carried on for some time, one normally reaches the point at which one sees in other people more similarities than differences, more what brings them closer to oneself than what estranges them. That is how this virtue, the capacity to listen as well as the acceptance of risk and contradiction, is formed. We know today, and the evidence for it is more striking than ever, that the world's current ills are not all of an economic nature, that no real-life situation can be reduced to the workings of only one of its component parts and that the laws of economics themselves cannot be seen out of the context of specific circumstances of time and space. How could the same standards be used to interpret the hatred boiling over in the former Yugoslavia, the persistent unrest in the Middle East, torn apart by chronic wars and involved in long and delicate negotiations, or the disquieting resurgence of racism and exclusion in Europe? The most deep-seated causes of this many-sided crisis are not - and have never been purely economic, and their remedies cannot be economic either. In forming our concepts of progress, material development and wealth, it is dangerous obstinately to ignore human factors on the grounds that they are more difficult to take into consideration than market variations. There is mortal danger in continuing to neglect education when it is becoming clearer and clearer that the responses to injustice and ignorance - which give rise to exclusion, violence and withdrawal - are to be found in the context of the search for and the sharing of knowledge. While the notion of tolerance remains controversial and its conceptual content is tirelessly and often brilliantly ridiculed, the same does not apply to its practice. But it is precisely its practice which is referred to in the Preamble to the Charter of the United Nations as the first means of maintaining peace, justice and respect for human rights and of promoting social progress. 'And for these ends, to practise tolerance...' In spite of the ambiguity of the notion, its practice remains consubstantial with democratic life. In my opinion, the United Nations Year for Tolerance in 1995 and the proclamation of a world agreement on the urgent need to practise tolerance should provide the beginnings of a response to the many crises of confidence that are undermining the world today. It was with
DG/93/13 - page 3 this in mind that, last February in Los Angeles, I launched an Appeal for Tolerance, addressing it more particularly to decision-makers and officials responsible for education. Could there be a better way of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations than by giving tolerance the place of honour? This would not be, in fact, the anniversary of an institution but a revival of the reasons which brought about its birth. 1995, above all, marks the fiftieth anniversary of a resolution, the resolution solemnly made by the peoples of the United Nations (they are 'united' by this common resolution) to save succeeding generations from what had 'brought untold sorrow to mankind' (Charter of the United Nations), to make sure that the intolerable would never occur again. There are a large number of standard-setting texts in international public law which define the fields of application of tolerance quite clearly. The declaration that I have in mind would not be another standard-setting instrument for inclusion with the others of the United Nations but the expression of an intention subscribed to by spiritual leaders and intellectuals from all over the world, which could also come into force in the minds of men. What is at stake here first of all is tolerance as an attitude to be instilled into the minds of each and every one of us, and also the mechanisms of the functioning of society and politics, which govern and form links between people, between history and the present, between States, between the governing and the governed, between the majority and the minority, between the citizen and the non-citizen, etc. The questions are then transposed in specific terms into the fields of international law, social institutions, justice, education, culture and communication and all converge on the essential question of a code of ethics of shared responsibility. In the world of the twenty-first century, the spiritual message of the religions must no longer be masked by ritual or twisted by fanaticism, and thinking about tolerance and about the principles on which it is based must be renewed. We shall need to express anew a unanimous resolve in the face of contemporary crises and it must not be just a rejection of the intolerable but must confirm the value of tolerance itself and of the values with which tolerance is so closely linked: democracy, human rights and solidarity. Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, The Chinese write the word 'crisis' by a combination of two other words, 'danger' and 'opportunity'. The crisis we are facing at the end of our century confirms this idea. Side by side with the threats which concern us particularly (proliferation of religious, ethnic and cultural tensions), the opportunities presenting themselves are immense. The extraordinary progress made in communications makes true solidarity possible and the informing of the general public to an extent utterly unknown before. Intellectuals and scientists occupy an important place in society, and that place will become even more pertinent. In fact, what really counts is not only the results of their research and work, which certainly transform daily life, but also their commitments, their moral attitudes, and their testimony. UNESCO has a unique role to play today in developing an awareness of the wishes that nations share, given the injustice and the new dangers to which our world is exposed. It has always had this role, which is the very spirit of its Constitution; but while the principles of the Constitution are more relevant than ever, they have become applicable in a different way today. We should remember, and we should remember every day, that our rejection of, or even our failure to seize, this historic opportunity
DG/93/13 - page 4 to enhance human dignity would, in the eyes of our children, belong to the category of the intolerable.